


The King is Dead. Long Live the King?

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Series: A True Outlaw Story [7]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Comedy, Drama, F/M, Innuendo, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 12:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13613337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: A story of Allan-A-Dale and Nell of Nettlestone. Hijinks at a fancy dress party thrown for Nottinghamshire nobles turn unpredictably serious, involving mistaken identities, unprotected intimacy, and life-altering decisions.Set some seven years after we first see Allan in 1x01 "Will You Tolerate This?" (which occurs in 1192).





	The King is Dead. Long Live the King?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sylvi10](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=sylvi10).



> Like its predecessor, "How to Tell a True Outlaw Story", this fic is set firmly within the possible lifetime span of the BBC series (post-S2 and the gang's return to England from the Holy Land. Set in AD 1199, historically when Richard I dies), so there's no real need to have read any of my fic series to enjoy and understand it.

**A.D. 1199 - Merton Hall -**  He had not  _meant_  to fall asleep. Not that he, like other lusty lads of his age-group, was prone to much anything else following such a slick bout of lovemaking, but still--that had not been the plan  _tonight_.

Allan-A-Dale shifted among the sheetings of the elegant, meant-for-a-Lord bed, and recalled to his mind the past half-hour or so in his brilliant, onlookers-ought-to-take-note seduction of Lady Ophenea, enacted on his way to her notorious, always-kept-locked-in-her-chamber jewels.

He had not, upon reflection, expected to quite so much enjoy himself. To find such pleasure (beyond mere satisfaction) in the deed. While titled ladies might appear to be, er, ' _open_ ' to the possible act, one often found them insurmountably shy--or frightened, even--when it came down to brass tacks. 

Inexperienced, he expected. Change-of-heart at the last moment, he expected. Enthusiastic partner, impressively skilled herself? Beyond a pleasant surprise.

He had actually had to stop himself (quite difficult at that  _particular_  juncture) from shouting, "I think I love you," mid- one of Lady Ophenea's particularly unanticipated tricks.

Of course, it was not that he had not gotten in more than a few of his own, specialized licks.  _Erm_. And those, actually, were also quite pleasurable to reminisce about as well.

It would be foolish, he knew, to stir unnecessarily any further in the large, opulent bed, no matter his dependably re-mounting desire not only for the game of swiping the Lady's jewels, but also for stealing a look at her lying--though not within his embrace,  _still_ \--lying beside him. 

Neither of them in their haste and ardor had bothered with fully-doffing their clothing. His trousers little more than just unlaced, the layers of her skirts thrown up, but not removed. And for him, of course, the necessity of retaining his obligatory party half-mask. 

In the spirit of comradeship she had also retained hers, a fuchsia, feathered number that had tickled him no end (and not entirely unpleasantly) during their interlude.

 

* * *

 

**Also, Merton Hall -** _The Sheriff's tooth, but Lord Winsot had finally fallen asleep_. No easy task, that had proved, putting  _this_  mark to bed. The doing of it had brought quite nearly all of Nell's talents to bear.

She could not be sure how long he might be expected to slumber in his recovery from their carnal tryst, her research on him not quite that intimately complete. 

She attempted to scan the room in the darkness (resultant from but two slender tapers being lit nearby the chamber's distant door) for his saddlebags, with which it was well-known he never traveled without--without also bringing along the Hathersage Ruby in a special, hidden compartment of said bags.

Her visual search of the room continued as she held herself still in the bed, faking sleep--though after their ragged-breath tango, the sweat on her skin not yet dry, in a less guarded moment she could have easily succumbed to rest herself.

For a lark, she thought about peeking under the hawkish mask Winsot had chosen to wear to the invitation-only masquerade still in full swing downstairs in the main Hall. 

Its sequins glittered in the faint candlelight, its long, curved beak standing in for a nose casting an almost sinister shadow onto the bed's headboard.

He was a handsome man, she had been reliably told, fit and in good health, his allotment of teeth his own. A widower three years past, and rather than settle with another bride, he was somewhat known for the enthusiastic enjoyment he took in the sampling of any local female pleasures. Though not one for the whorehouse.

A man as fine looking as he, it was said, need not pay for his amusement. But take his pick from what was offered willingly, where the bedding of him was concerned.

_No_ , Nell decided in favor of prudence. She would not lift the mask to judge for herself. Perhaps a fun lark, but better not to remind herself too starkly of the baron she had tricked into bed in order only that she might pinch far more from him than simply his juicy bum.

 

* * *

 

Lady Ophenea's chin turned toward Allan.

Lord Winsot, his only half-done trouser lacings dangling into the bed, showed himself awake, and rolled up on one hip, toward Nell.

And a crisp knocking could be heard at the door to the chamber. 

Allan's eyes locked on Lady Ophenea's. 

Nell's sought out what she could see (and it was not very much in the darkness) of Lord Winsot's.

"Enter!" the thieves commanded in two-octave tandem.

 

* * *

 

In came several serving girls, a large tray of victuals overflowing in its array and bounty. The girls placed it on a large table nearby the banked fire.

Behind them came a stable boy lugging a large washtub, its back made higher than its sides. A veritable army of serving girls marched behind it, each emptying her pitcher of steaming water into its depth.

It was such an efficiently enacted servicing of the room and the two nobles it was thought to hold, that in only a few moments Lord Winsot and Lady Ophenea found themselves  _quite_  alone again.

 

* * *

 

The chamber door had barely settled back on its hinges when Nell made a grab for Lord Winsot's hand. She thrust its grime-tainted nails, their tips irregular and untended, toward the eyeholes of the lord's mask. 

"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded. " _I_  did not order a bath, and seeing this, I daresay neither did  _you_!"

Allen looked on as Lady Ophenea demonstrated her outrage. In order to do so she had sat up in the bed, giving him a particular angle's view of her lower face and its features' underside.

His right eye slid into a near squint as he studied her upper lip. Her identity confirmed, with his free hand he reached for the long, hooked bird's beak of his half-mask, and pulled it away from his face. 

"Pot," he told the woman with whom he shared the bed, knowing her--without any additional signifier--for Nell, "meet Kettle."

The skin below her nose and above her lips stretched, flattening the area there. 

"You've got to be bloody joking," she cried out upon seeing the face revealed was Allan's. Their masquerades up, and botched at that, she pushed her mask onto her forehead with the heel of her hand, where it sat, giving her a second pair of eyes looking on. Lending her the illusion of doubled perception.

She surveyed him in Lord Winsot's finery, now knowing him for Allan; the soft fabric of his impractically light-colored tunic, the buffoonishly fashionable (among the wealthy nobility) trousers. 

The unwashed and untended nails, of course, had been no true giveaway--many nobles, like their peasants, had little enough interest in washing. No true giveaway until the steaming bath just delivered to the chamber.

As she looked him over, Allan let his own concentration settle on Nell's face. She had already taken him in ( _Ouch!_  That was a nice one to remember for the lads back at camp) with her attire, and what he had been able to see (and, more fully, feel) of her flesh. 

He did not fault himself for not sussing her out. His mind had been on the task at hand, and the one to follow. And the task at hand had proven more than remarkable enough to distract a monk from his meditation.  _Hmm_. Perhaps that metaphor was not so very apt...

"Not bein' funny," Allan's eyes shot over to the tray left for them, his mind always to the immediate, "but I  _am_  a bit peckish, ain't you, Love?"

Nell's back straightened at his suggestion. Not unlike hackles rising on a dog. The tray of food, after all, was hers by rights. "Lady Ophenea prefers a post-coital snack, I am told," she instructed him, her forbidding tone meant to admonish him, keep him clear of it. "Cold beef still on the bone. Bread just from the ovens."

"Jelly?" Allan asked, already having sprung up and made his way over to the tray, his hand in a pot, fingers to his mouth. His other hand at keeping his gaping trousers (still not re-laced) up.

" _That_ ," Nell announced as to the 'jelly' he had discovered (in reality a combination ointment cleanser of sorts), "is for her lady parts."

Allan coughed and spat, gave a bone-deep shiver of disgust, but did not let the unpleasant detour deter him from sampling the rest of the repast. 

Judging its contents to be above average edible, he lifted the tray, heavy with its foodstuffs, leaving the small pot of 'jelly' behind on the table, and brought the rest to the bed, setting the charger (worth a fair amount could they devise a way to smuggle it out of the house) between them on the coverlet, rucked up and awry from their yet un-acknowledged tumble.

Nell eyed him suspiciously (if he had not known better, Allan would have said, 'with all four of her eyes').

"Lord Winsot," he informed her conversationally, "likes himself a bath...after a romp. 'Twas necessary to complete the illusion I were him."

"And where is he now?" Nell reached for a bone. She had not seen such a plenty of meat in more than half a year. And that had been for seven times their present twosome.

"In a cupboard, chatting up a kitchen wench." Mischievously he inclined his head, " _mmm_. Somehow, they came to be locked in. Though I doubt he shall have any complaint of it. Garcelle  _was_  second prettiest."

"And what of the first prettiest?"

"My alibi," he offered, "should I have needed one."

Assuming he was as keen at present to know about her day as she was to learn of his, she offered, "I suppose you shall want to know what of Lady Ophenea?"

"Wot?" At present Allan's mind was far removed from the woman he had meant to be at burgling. He saw one woman alone, his mind with room for no other: the woman before him, the rich eats between them. 

"Oh, alright, then," he agreed, without conviction, despite Nell's volunteering of any sort of information being a relative rarity.

"She had to seek out a distant privy, as far from the great hall as possible. Something she ate has decidedly  _not_  agreed with her." She smirked at this and, her mind running ahead, cast a glance about. "Did they not send drink?"

Allan did not reply, his mouth stuffed with bread, but got up again and walked to the table, sighting a pitcher and solo goblet there. Swallowing his mouthful, he gave the pitcher a sniff. 

"Burgundy wine," he reported.

She scowled.

"Wot? Not to your taste?" He brought it anyway, with the single goblet, pouring it rim-full and setting the pitcher bedside, on the flagstone floor.

Nell took the goblet from him and drank deeply to satisfy her thirst. "Its taste is somewhat tainted by the lengths the Sheriff--and those like him--go to to acquire it from France."

Accepting back the goblet and taking a swig for himself, Allan shook his head. "I don't follow," he said, through another over-stuffed mouthful of beef and bread.

"Slave workers," she announced, "deported to the Continent as such, because they cannot pay their accrued debts. Sometimes not even the debtors themselves--who are kept in prisons or labor camps here--but instead their families are sent away to work off the debt  _for_  them."

"Didn't know that," he confessed. "Sounds like an evil one might learn of nearer the coast," he offered.

"If one has an eye for sighting such,  _and_  an ear willing to listen," she agreed, stopping short of admitting she had spent time along the coast.

He again offered her the goblet, so that she might take her turn. 

His mind had not hidden from him that, rather than drink straight from the pitcher (which he could easily have done), he was enjoying sharing this single chalice with her, the handing of it back and forth, fingertips brushing fingers in the action of passing it from one to the other; his lips where hers had been, hers where his. 

It felt of companionship to him. Not, exactly, the comradeship of the forest, surely, but something. And connections outside of himself a rare enough find. 

No further questions (no further thoughts, really) about Ophenea. Now, to Nell. He crossed his ankles in front of himself, as one might sit as a child, and asked, "And so why are  _you_  here? Of all places?"

She brought some bed sheet up to her mouth, to wipe off where a generous hunk of cold fat on the beef she held had left a shiny smear. "I am come for the Hathersage Ruby. And if I can find the saddle bags, it will be mine."

Allan laughed, he could not help it. "Wot? That? I lifted that bauble off Lord Winsot three years hence."

"Not true!" Nell objected. "What you scored was a modest-sized garnet. A surrogate-- _a bribe_ \--meant to distract and throw a callow thief off the real prize. An everyday jewel,  _at best_. Anyone with a brain in their skulls knows that."

"So you have been keeping up with me, then?" he asked, his mouth twisting into a satisfied grin, his interest in this deduction more intent than she would have liked. He sat forward slightly in the bed, consigned the single goblet to the floor by its pitcher.

"And you?" she inquired--as though in challenge, as to his objective at the Hall--her brows raising.

"Lady Ophenea's jewels."

Now it was Nell's turn to laugh. She did not have to work to put her belly into it. "All paste," she declared. "You have my word, Outlaw. I have seen and rejected them already for myself. Paste and glass--if not sugar crystals that would melt in the rain. The woman is a fake, an utter counterfeit." 

Reaching down into her corseting, she withdrew a large, stitched-together piece of padding which had been significantly enhancing her over-the-top décolletage, and her left bosom in particular. Without it she hardly filled out the frock's bodice on that side.

Taking both hands (and having to set down her half-eaten bone of beef to do so), Nell threw the stolen frock's skirts over her shoulders without hesitance, managing to leave only her thin muslin shift still dangling about the top of her thighs, to show him an interesting contraption of caging devised to give the illusion of a broader hip and bum.

"Knock me down with a feather," Allan remarked, having thought he'd seen it all. With all this inventive packaging it was no wonder he had not recognized her for herself.

She let her skirts fall back down, and continued, clearly enjoying deconstructing the Lady. "And I shall not disappoint you with tales of the thinness of her ladyship's Nature-given hair. It is so scant she wears nearly  _two_  full horsehair wigs (when she is not in a wimple) to compensate for it." 

Nell picked her bone of beef back up and again set to it, first wagging it across the silver platter that separated them in the direction of Allan's nose. "Her jewels are like their mistress: a sham."

He was not sure why, but at this news (which should have been dismaying) he cracked a smile. 

"Still," he told her, leaning further over the tray that separated them on the bed, "they would have looked quite fetching--'round  _this_  neck." 

He reached out and trailed the back of his first finger along the narrow, ruffled fabric of her frock's neckline, letting it slip cheekily down in the space between frock and flesh upon encountering the now un-exaggerated breast.

His eyes had quickly gone from holding her own to following the path of his own teasing finger, but she kept her eyes on his throughout his uninvited gesture, warily, as if she were taking his measure, as if she were adding up in her head how far he might lean on the wobbly mattress unsupported by his hands, before tumbling face-first into the food tray.

Before his free hand could attempt further familiarity, she grabbed for his beef, and handily had it away from him before he could withdraw the errant digit. 

Withdraw it he did (though sorrowfully).

In handing the beef back to him, she took a generous bite from it, though her other hand was already occupied with a joint of her own.

He attempted to reseat himself, and (for the moment) docilely set to his beef again. 

"The Hathersage," he mused, not further disputing that it was still in play, and  _not_ , in point of fact, among his prior scores. "That's big game for you, my girl. Is something afoot?"

Noncommittally she offered, "Perhaps I am thinking of getting out."

His gaze leveled, the answer to his question one he found he did not wish to miss. "Out? Where would you go?"

"What's that to you?" she asked, like a child's nurse slapping her charge's hand away from candies they had not paid for. "Someplace without A-Dales, I do not doubt."

Allan did not respond, but sat down his beef, poured another goblet, and reclined away from her, as if in deep study, wrist to his knee.

He drank.

As they two had never spent any length of time together in utter silence, Nell uncharacteristically found herself speaking--wishing to fill it.

"Well, the world is changing, isn't it? Set to be redrawn in the image of a new king they say. A king we've already more than a mere bitter taste of. At his hand, and the Sheriff's, Nottinghamshire's more than three-quarters of the way to Hell already, doncha reckon?"

"Well," Allan mused, handing her the goblet, "might be fewer taxes with the war over."

"When, in your life, have you ever encountered, 'fewer taxes'?" she disputed him.

"No," he agreed, shaking his head, letting it fall hard back onto the pillows, laying himself out on the bed, his belly aching in its fullness. "Everything  _is_  about to change."

"You say that like you take it quite personally. Are you so wounded by Richard's death? You said he was sort of a prick."

"That sorted out alright  _in the end_ , my girl," he reminded her, his eyes momentarily to the ceiling. "John has made...overtures to Robin. To the gang."

"The man to be crowned king--got him in your pocket, too?"

"Naw," Allan contested. "But he knows he needs as many lords on his side as possible, right? He's offered to restore Robin; his lands, his title--all that was taken from him. And for the rest of us..."

"Hmm? Those of you actually guilty of crimes?"

"'Done nothin' in my life to deserve hanging," he began, backtracking, "not a-purpose." He sighed. "For the rest of us, either pardons or paroles. Depending on our priorly ascertained guilt."

"And?"

"And I don't  _know_  what to do!" he protested to the ceiling at her prodding, thinking his quandary an abundantly obvious one.

"Hang on," she announced. "Wait. It's free. And you're not gonna take it?" She put her beef down to the platter. "When was the last time you turned down summat of value that's not gonna cost you nuffin'?"

"No," he dissented, a slight shake of his hair against the pillows, "you don't see. I think it might well cost me somethin'."

Bewilderment emanated from her.

"Okay," he began, "what was our cry? The gang's?"

She offered her response tentatively, not seeing what it had to do with anything. "We are Robin...Hood?"

"Naw, before that: 'I fight for Robin Hood, and King Richard.' And though I may not have in the beginning, I learnt to." He came up on one elbow. "Reckon signing up with Prince--er,  _King_ \--John's disloyal to that?"

She did not choose to answer his question. "So you're not so much a monarchist, as one man, choosing on a case-by-case basis whom he might support and serve?  _Pshew_. That's an independent contractor, A-Dale. Life on your own terms, work and loyalty on your own terms." Her voice rang with approval.

"So you subject  _yourself_  to no one?" he asked, curiously. "Father? Husband? Baron? Sovereign?"

She scoffed at his list. "Why should I? They have  _each_  betrayed any trust I might have once placed with them."

He thought to ask her what she might do if considering his position. "Do  _you_  want to be pardoned? Given  _your_  parole by a cheat? While others, perhaps less guilty--are left to rot?"

She shrugged. "I was never on the straight and narrow, nor in search of it. Were someone to offer me a pardon--for what, I don't know--why not take it? Might come in handy. Might be a waste of time. Either way wouldn't influence my future dealings with them."

Allan now sat up, one knee pulled to himself, his arm wrapped about it. His other leg straight. Somehow he had managed to put the food tray to the other side of them, and Nell now occupied the area directly in front of him, closer to the foot of the bed, leaning forward, mirroring his own interest in their conversation.

"John will be coronated shortly," he repeated what they both knew as truth. "Robin will likely stand with him, accept back his lands and position, his political influence." His fingers rubbed their pads impatiently against the sheets. "He has asked each of us for our loyalty, likewise, to support and throw-in with whatever he decides." 

Maybe it was wrong to look to another person to know what to do, how to choose. Certainly it was not a habit he had ever formed, asking someone else for advice. 

His eyes, looking for a distraction, slid over to the tub, increments of diminishing steam still visible coming off of it. 

"Do you mind?" he asked, with an inclination of his head, open-endedly not clarifying if he meant, 'if I make use of the bath' or 'if I disrobe for the bath'.

Nell shrugged. Then moved to replace the padding she had removed from under her left bosom. 

She was making ready to go. He could even sense that she was looking at what was left of the beef and bread and trying to puzzle out how she might stow it to smuggle it off.

"Ah, no," he heard himself say, in knee-jerk response. "Don't go. Stay."

"Stay?" she asked, looking around, herself clearly not having forgotten their time in this place was restricted, precariously at best. Having not forgotten the room's main piece of furniture: the bed.

"Fine," he acceded. "With your clothes on."

"I had my clothes on before," she reminded him slyly, in the first reference made to their earlier of-the-flesh actions. 

She neither said she would stay, nor made further actions to leave. In the distance the low tones of a troubadour and a clutch of musicians brought in to play for the party could be heard via echoes along the Hall's stone passageways.

He slid out of Lord Winsot's attire in a trice, not bothering to look around for a bath shirt, had he even known and understood the nobility enjoyed making use of them--peasants had few enough clothes to wear day-to-day. It would have been ridiculous to require another set just for bathing. 

The feel of the water on his calf as he stepped into the soak was one he almost had trouble recalling, most hygiene in Sherwood being seen to in quickly running streams, or the occasional deep, chilly pool. He settled into the inviting heat of the tub, leaning forward, away from the high back, chin down, raising his eyes to learn that she had, in fact, gone.

Seeing this, he let out a little hiss of disappointment, as though he had been holding his breath.

Then he heard the sponge behind him, dripping with water as it was removed from the tub and raised to his back.

"So you get your parole, or your pardon," Nell's voice came to him, secretively, low in its pitch as she was so close to his ear she needed little volume to be heard. "Whichever, from the new king." 

She worked the sponge into his neck and upper back. 

Glad she was behind him so she could not see, he closed his eyes at her touch, rolled his neck to crack it.

She continued. "Who will surely betray your loyalty to him at some point in the not-too-distant future--even  _if_  he seeks to keep Lord Hood's." 

In the growing-cloudy waters could see the old skin, and grunge, sloughing off him from her assistance. "And what do you do if you are betrayed?"

He let her make another pass at his back before answering. "Forgive."

"What!" The sponge fell noisily from her grip.

"Well," he set about explaining, "perhaps not a king who has reneged on a blood-sworn oath. That's a political betrayal, there. Not personal." He stood and reached for the single rough towel left for the job, facing her. "But a friend? A comrade who fails in his loyalty, shows cracks in his trustworthiness, who falls when he should have risen? Him, you forgive." In a quick tuck he had the towel about his waist.

He saw in her eyes a kaleidoscope of astonishment, of wonder. "But how can you?" It was the second-most sincere thing she had ever said to him.

He shrugged, putting a hand into the tub to wet it for running through his hair. "Because it is the only way to live. Because once someone has so forgiven you, it is the only way to pay such a monumental debt back."

Upon speaking this hard-learned truth, he felt as though for a moment he had some sort of conversational, confessional momentum on his side. Something in that wonder of her eyes read to him that she would accept whatever he might choose to do next. The way you might instinctively deduce that your opponent in cards will accept your bluff.

But it was not bluffing that interested him at present.

"Give us a kiss," he said, his chin bobbing toward her, though she was some ten feet away.

"What?" she asked, but showed no sign of annoyance. "Just as me?" Her eyes narrowed. She must have removed her mask when she had stepped to the rear of the bathing tub. It was gone, as was her seemingly doubled perception. "Just as you?"

"Yeah," he agreed, his voice half-strength. "Just as Nell, kissing Allan."

"Why?" the earlier stroke of wonder not yet skid from her eyes. "Was before not...more than enough for you?"

He did not take on the question of their mistaken lovemaking. 

" _You_  know," he shrugged, recalling how much she was once willing to part with in order to gain the truth. "Just so, so something real happened here today. Summat true. That's all."

His gut had been spot-on. She stepped toward him, stepped into his still-wet skin. He found he had no idea where to put his hands, on 'Lady Ophenea's' phony hips, or trumped-up tits. 

Nell raised her right hand to his face and brought her thumb to his brow, wiping at a spot there as though it were wet from the dripping of his hair. He felt the friction against his lashes as he blinked and they tickled her open palm.

He did not know what sort of kiss it might be, what sort he might expect or might coax it into once it had begun. Fevered? Antsy? Impatient as they two had been earlier in their disguises? Slow and belabored of effort as their busses had become when their bodily dance's finesse required their distracted minds to process multiple sensations in both the giving and the receiving?

His request about to be granted, he waited to see.

She brought her face to his, which he had lowered to make her reaching of it easier. He thought of her upper lip, the way it rested there, ever reclining at an angle, in repose, waiting--for him?

She placed her lips at the distant corner of his mouth, so that her kiss slanted on the very edge of where both his lips and 'tache met. It was tender beyond words, sweet in a way that bespoke something of sorrow and yet the surmounting of that sorrow. And sincere enough to call a three-day-gone corpse back to life.

Her salute did not last for long. He had not even time to bring his arms about her and hold her in an embrace.

But he did close his eyes for the act. He did let himself feel the whole-body flush it evoked in him. When she began to pull away, he even let himself swim a moment in the darkness of his closed eyes, time not passing. Certain she would be there to receive his ready response.

But when he opened them--it could not have been more than a millisecond later--two milliseconds? She was no longer there. He was alone in the chamber that showed the progression of their time together, the mess they had made, the carnal caper they had shared, the feast, the bathe. 

He reached up to feel the side of his mouth. All that evidence. But nothing, really, to show the truth of it. Nothing tangible.

 

* * *

 

Allan did not try to chase after her. It was likely he had little enough time left to him before Lord Winsot himself got free and ruined his charade. 

He pulled on the lord's trousers, and his tunic, grabbed his mask, and headed for the stables where he had stowed his own, reliable outlaw gear.

He  _did_  give himself the luxury of mulling the latter half of his visit to Merton Hall over in his mind. 

_Nell_. Somehow he'd had her, and yet--he hadn't. He was not quite sure how one might explain that to the lads in the course of a story. He had a horrible thought. Perhaps the day came when one...stopped. Telling such stories.

_Blimey_. May he never live to see it. 

He reviewed and reflected upon more of their shared conversation (once unmasked) in his mind. 

_Wait_. 'They have each', she had said when speaking of betrayal. ' _Each_ '. To a list including the designation of 'husband'. Did she mean--? Had she meant--?

He gave a swear that Djaq had taught him in the Holy Land. 

_Nell. Some man's wife_.

May he never live to see it.

**_..the end..._ **


End file.
